utility_meter needs half-hourly for UK metering

[scriptengine]

The problem

In the UK the National Electricity Grid and in-home Smart meter electricity consumption is based on 30minute periods (on the hour 00:00.0 and half hour 30:00.0)

The utility_meter integration ("helper"?) has cycle options:

• quarter-hourly, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly and yearly

For the utility_meter to be useful for HA users in the UK with variable or peak and off-peak tariffs there needs to be a cycle option of 30 minutes "half-hourly" (starting/ resetting on the hour and half hour) [please]

Docs: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/utility_meter/
Code: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/dev/homeassistant/components/utility_meter/const.py

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

2022.12.5 /current

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

not applicable

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

utility_meter

Link to integration documentation on our website

docs: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/utility_meter/

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[home-assistant]

Hey there @dgomes, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (utility_meter) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

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[dgomes]

Utility Meter supports all cycles imaginable through the "cron" option:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/utility_meter/#cron

[scriptengine]

Utility Meter supports all cycles imaginable through the "cron" option:
Absolutely it does, however every Home Assistant user in the UK wanting to use utility_meter with the 30 minute periods our SmartMeters and the national grid (for example carbon intensity) are based on will firstly will have to figure out that it can be done with a Cron option and then lookup the help for cron and code it up themselves.

I can imagine the 'devs' don't want to support every possible option but its unlikely that every power utility in the world will run different periods and the UK is a pretty big Home Assistant user base.

The alternative to supporting 'half-hourly' in the code would be to add something to the documentation. I can attempt to do that if there would be support for it.

[dgomes]

The cron option was added exactly because the number of different periods quickly exploded after the initial daily/weekly/yearly cycles. It was then decided that it would not scale to explicitly add every single regional quirks, and the flexible "cron" option was added.

Of course you can propose edits to the documentation, all very much welcomed!

Disclaimer: in my region (Portugal) we have 15min cycles...